Morning Air

So after a night of carousing with Elliott and Cat and Hayden, which involved a Strawberry Cheesecake spoonbender at Good Times and a late night Circuit City run, I was feeling pretty tired (from the previous night's lack of sleep). So when I got back home, I essentially crashed, while originally hoping it'd be a quick 3 hour respite at best, I ended up waking some 7 hours later or so around 4 in the morning. So I figured I'd get up, finish some studying and homework and do something I've been meaning to do and get into the habit of for the longest time. Go for a brisk morning jog!

So I threw on my hoodie, clipped on my Ipod shuffle, and pressed play queuing up an infectiously catchy Japanese techno pop tune from the band Supercar and started on my lap around the Boulder streets. Jogging on concrete isn't spectacularly great for the knees so I may reconsider a different route later on, but it feels great to work up a good sweat in the morning and breathe in that fresh air and get the blood and heart pumping. Love it.

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Pursuit of strength

It felt good to wear the Taekwondo dobok again. The light white fabric with the Adidas black trim. The feeling of folding that black belt once more with my name sewn in in Hangul. It felt good to get back into that horse riding stance and throw that punch while barking out a scream from my diaphragm. It felt good to wipe the sweat off my brow with the sleeve. It felt good to step forward and throw that turning kick, the mechanics of which have been so ingrained into the memory of my body's muscles. It felt good to be back doing Taekwondo.

...But it didn't feel so good the next morning.

Haha. So I knew coming into Muay Thai that the scheduling would be rough on me. Essentially on Mondays and Wednesdays, I have to have dinner by 5, leave around 6, train Muay Thai from 6:30 to 7:30 for an hour, drive back to the apartment and walk (up Folsom hill) to the CU Rec Center where I then spend two hours doing Taekwondo. The first hour being traditional techniques and training and the second hour being sparring. It's interesting change going from Muay Thai to TKD, in terms of style of training even to training attire. It's a little nuts though, I'm pretty exhausted by the second hour of TKD and so I'm going to be slow and sloppy while sparring which probably isn't a good idea but at least it'll help with my conditioning and force me to train while in an exhausted mentality/status. My fight at Collegiate was a serious indication of my lack of cardio and inability to fight while tired.

All in all, my deltoids and upper body are fatigued from Muay Thai and my hamstrings and legs are fatigued from TKD but I love it because I love what I do.

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School Spirit

So this is what my school schedule looks like this semester:

Monday
10-10:50 Religions of East Asia
11-11:50 Modern/Contemporary Lit
1-1:50 Neurophysiology
2-2:50 Behavioral Genetics
6:30-7:30 Muay Thai
8-10 Taekwondo

Tuesday
8-10 Neurophysiology Lab
11-12:15 Human Anatomy

Wednesday
11-11:50 Modern/Contemporary Lit
1-1:50 Neurophysiology
2-2:50 Behavioral Genetics
6:30-7:30 Muay Thai
8-10 Taekwondo

Thursday
11-12:15 Human Anatomy

Friday
8-8:50 Religions of East Asia Recitation
10-10:50 Religions of East Asia
11-11:50 Modern/Contemporary Lit
1-1:50 Neurophysiology
2-2:50 Behavioral Genetics
5:30-6:30 Muay Thai

It's interesting that for the first time I don't have all 8 o clock classes, which is surprisingly nice to be able to sleep in a little considering my usual late night habits. It's not by design, I usually prefer morning classes since I'm strangely more chipper in the morning and have a tendency to crash during the afternoon actually (I'm a habitual napper) but I'm finding that I enjoy this schedule so far. Yet with school and martial arts, I'm keeping myself really busy and occupied during the day. I also tend to do most of my studying and homework on campus, so I'm rarely in my apartment with the exception of sleep and dining needs and considering that I'm at odds with my roommate, I don't mind it one bit. The internet is faster on campus anyway and if I need to print documents I can sneak into the Psychology computer lab. As far as classes go, so far a lot of my work load has been reading. Religions of East Asia is nice in that it only meets on Mondays and Fridays and it's a subject topic that interests me, so I don't mind the reading for that class. Modern Lit is a lot of consistent reading but because it's novels, I find the reading a lot more enjoyable and find myself preferring to catch up on my Lit reading first instead of taking care of my other assigned reading from my other classes. The writing work load hasn't been too stressful, though I have a paper and project due next week so I'll likely have myself an enjoyable, and by "enjoyable" I mean sedulous, weekend of writing and video editing (my project being a video project). Neurophysiology is likely going to be my hardest course but one I need to ace since my physiology gpa is in the dumps and really needs a bolstering. The majority of the students in the class are seniors which has me scratching my head as to why I'm taking it currently but I'm in there with Cat so at least I've got someone to cling to while I thrash violently in the academic sea trying to stay afloat. Behavioral Genetics is difficult to gauge and will come down to how the professor's exams are like. And anatomy will also be difficult but I'm banking on my previous high school experience to help me out in that class, though granted the college course is much more in depth in comparison to the days with Gigliotti. It's insane how quickly the work load overcomes you in college, you finish off one assigned reading or homework only to have a megabajillion more things to get done, but I'm doing fairly well so far staying ahead or on par with the lectures and readings and am determined to succeed this semester. To top everything off, the hours of martial arts training each day (I'm going to try and train on Tuesdays and Thursdays as well) keeps me busy, but it's a fun busy and it's activity that I'm actually always looking forward to, an "active rest" if you will, and it helps alleviates stress I suppose. But it's super late (I don't have class till 11 tomorrow but the exhaustion the muscles behind my eyes are experiencing is signaling me to get some respite) so I'm keeping this entry somewhat short. Time to walk back home and get some sleep.

Or maybe I'll stay up and go jogging at 5 instead...?

No, I should probably get some sleep. haha